More Space Marines In Drag

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Relic and Iron Lore’s forthcoming fourth (count ’em!) thing in the Dawn of War franchise has revealed another one of its unit types in action. This time it’s the Celestians. Woo!

Thanks, not-gametrailers.

Three grabs of the Celestians in action, beneath the cut, as well as some explanation of what the Celestians are from our resident 40k experts.

So, I talked to Alec…
Kieron: Do you know what a Celestian is?
Alec: No
Kieron: What if I said it’s a 40K troop?
Alec: No
Kieron: Aces.

So, I walked upstairs to Jim.
Kieron: Do you know what a Celestian is?
Jim: Arghh… uhmmm… no. Why do you ask?
Kieron: What if I said it’s something to do with 40K?
Jim: Er… I dunno. Maybe something to do with the Emperor Jesus Kid things?
Kieron: Aces.

So I had a conversation with Walker.
Kieron: Do you know what a Celestian is?
John: No.
Kieron: What if I said it’s something to do with 40k?
John: What’s 40k?
Kieron: Aces.

Well, I didn’t have the last one as he’s still off in Philadelphia, but that’s how it would have almost certainly have gone. The guy didn’t even know what a Noldor elf was.

Which leaves the duty of explaining the Celestians’ position in the extensive 40K mythos to you all. Well, the Celestians are a high level Sisters of Battle shock troop who… ooh, look! Pictures! Go clicky!

Nuns with guns and Evil Eldar are, undoubtedly, the two lamest additions to the 40K universe. Real shame they had to go “Actually, 40K IS an unashamed mirror of fantasy” and come up with the frankly rather weak Dark Eldar story/excuse. Bleh.

I played Dark Crusade recently and the campaign mode there was a frustrating let down, as it took a good initial premise ( Risk ) and then ruined it by having the actual battles distil all the worst aspects of skirmish mode in a repititious annoyance.

Skirmish mode can be great fun if you set up epic 3v3 or 4v4 battles. The AI is poor and half finished, but it is in every RTS game and the solution is the same every time – look for the AI mod by the lone guy who has managed to comprehensively humble the original programmers by fixing their mess in his spare time with little more than access to to the scripting controls.

I don’t see why the engine prevents them from doing ‘nids. It’s already rendering entire screens full of orks shooting, hacking and exploding. And PCs specs have improved considerably since the first game was released. What a bunch of teases. :P

What else exactly would you expect? That’s what ALL RTS are. Do you want a dynamic plot or something?
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Well, if you look at the years-old WC3 for example, they have missions where you have to escort units, defend missions, hero-only missions, tower defense like missions and so on and so on….

so yes, it IS possible to have missions that are not only skirmish ;-)
Mixing it up a bit = for teh win

Garth, it’s very much worth it. Along with the expansions. To be honest Ghiest. I think these screenshots look beautiful. Especially when you have a 3d engine doing so many battle units on screen doing so many things at once.

Suffice to say the 3d engine Relic has created here is impressive in terms of how much happens. Everything from the long pull-out camera option to the per-model zoom-in. I don’t know, but this game still looks impressive to me when everything is cranked up. Even if the engine is old compared to whats out there.

This is one of my fav RTS series to come out in a long time. Much more than SC. Definitely looking forward to Dawn of War 2 more than Starcraft 2.

I pretty much liked Dark Crusade’s SP mode, eventhough it was, in the end, a series of kirmish fights, there was something of an interesting way of doing a RTS SP. It lacked variety, that’s for sure, i was disappointed that they did not feel the need to somehow adapt the SP for each race you’d be playing with, and the “Auto resolve” option felt more random than anything.
But i still enjoyed it; now i hope this sequel / expansion pack or whatever would build up on it, and extend the SP to whole planets, and include Genestealers, and.. am i hoping for too much ? Alright, i’ll settle for gruesome aliens beasts.